war is a legal status attributed to a political state of affairs.
the state of war. being at war.
it seems that state power is so constructed (by us, but we forget) that any war is necessarily legitimate except when it isnt.
when is a war not legitimate?
generally, it seems, a war is not legitimate ex post facto when you lose.
in certain cases, after you loose, a court can be convened that retroactively delegitimates a war and thereby exposes to prosecution all the agents who acted within the bounded rationality shaped by the assumption that that war was legitimate.
in the case of nuremburg, part of the problem was that the germans in particular had created real problems for the notion of nationalism by, well, going kinda far with it, and the allies liked nationalism, they relied on it themselves, just not the same kind of nationalism exactly, not precisely the same kind no, but close, in the same ballpark, the same sort of nationalism, but not exactly the same----so there had to be a process of bad apple naming and locating and there we have it.
nationalism uber alles.
huzzah.
so it follows for example that genocide is only genocide when you loose a war involving "genocidal acts"--acts that one might argue tend toward genocide but which do not themselves constitue genocide.
if you win, then there is no genocide.
think manifest destiny instead.
it is nice to have holidays that do and do not bring to mind that sort of thing, the non-genocide genocide particular to nation-states that do not loose the war. we gather together and eat tremendous amounts. thanks for not letting us loose, we do not say.
but i digress.
in the context of a "legitimate" war--that is of a legal status attributed to a political state of affairs--there are extensions of policy that unfold within a frame of reference that is taken by the actors as being necessarily legitimate. war involves killing lots of people and policy directives can be issued such that lots more of a particular category of people are killed than others and so it goes.
the legitimacy of the war---the logical framework within which the various actions that unfold are oriented---at one level is decided by the actions of the state.
so from the viewpoint of a military, any officially sanctioned action is necessarily legitimate because it is officially sanctioned.
and any official sanction is legitimate.
so in principle there is never any reason for members of the military to not follow orders because there can be no illegitimate war.
there is the possibility of refusing to follow a patently illegal or unethical order.
but there is no absolute position from which an order can be judged patently illegal or unethical.
and the military itself operates within a bounded rationality that would tend strongly to exclude this kind of consideration. this is referred to as hierarchy, discpline, espirt du corps, that kind of thing.
it is a problem.
you would think that states would be very reluctant to deploy their military because the military is not a deliberative body and so exists to apply directives shaped by political decisions concerning state interests, those which are sanctioned by the legal category "state of war"...you would think that states would only deploy their military in situations where the basis for the action was unproblematic...like as a defensive move...a defensive move directed at an adversary who actually did what that adversary is accused of doing. in other words, you would think that states would not make shit up as the basis for deploying their military, wouldnt you?
remember the maine. the gulf of tonkin. wmds. war on terror.
and you would think that the political consequences of making shit up as the basis for a war would be quite dire, wouldnt you?
that making shit up as the basis for war would be outside the limits circumscribed by immunity from prosecution enjoyed by state actors.
because would you not agree that the responsibility for all the damage, to all sides, inflicted in the context of a war without adequate justification would rebound onto the holders to state power who undertook that war?
but this too would be ex post facto. sometimes afterward, a legal proceeding could happen that would retroactively declare a previous war to have been a problem. o you guys sholdnt have done that. that was bad.
in real time, however, people die.
and there is no legal basis for refusing orders like that which host outlines.
but i would think that "supporting our troops" would extend to a demand that war not be undertaken for arbitrary reasons. that an administration be held to account for fabricating reasons to use the military. you would think that "support our troops" would entail not wanting to see the folk who are in the military placed in traumatic situations unless there is a clear and compelling reason to do so.
i would think that "support our troops" would go way beyond simply sending folk in the military stuff....tho i suppose doing so is a good thing as the people who are charged with executing an irrational and unnecessary policy are not the ones responsible for making that policy, now are they?
i mean, who is?
ultimately, i would think that the people who politically supported george w bush are responsible for the iraq war and that the least they can do is send some stuff to those folk, since it was their political actions that resulted in the military being deployed to iraq in the first place, isnt it?
i wonder how much stuff you have to send to the folk stuck in the increasing lunacy that is iraq to enable conservatives to forget that their political actions are directly responsible--are a condition of possibility--for the military being in iraq in the first place?
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a gramophone its corrugated trumpet silver handle
spinning dog. such faithfulness it hear
it make you sick.
-kamau brathwaite
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